March 31st, 2008
13. Banandine, urban legend
Forty years after the Berkeley Barb printed a satirical story about a supposed hallucinogenic called "bananadine" in a bid to get the authorities to ban bananas, the legend that smoking banana peels can blow your mind, man, is still going strong. The March 1967 story spread all over the country, causing communities to organize "smoke-outs" against the scourge, and hippies to chant paeans to the tropical fruit at be-ins. It received a further boost when William Powell included a recipe for purifying and using bananadine ("1. Obtain 15 lbs. of ripe yellow bananas…") in The Anarchist Cookbook. And that's how it keeps popping up in popular myth today, since the Cookbook is still in print (against the wishes of its author, who regards it as a youthful misadventure). New York University did a study on peel scrapings later in 1967 and concluded that there were no psychoactive substances to be found there—the high, they said, was psychological. That didn't stop the Dead Milkmen from recommending banana highs in 1988 ("Smokin' Banana Peels"). Who are you gonna believe? Eggheads, or the Milkmen? If you ask us, those scientists are on a bum trip, dude. Don't let them harsh your yellow mellow.
14. Nuke, RoboCop 2
Like a cross between Timothy Leary and Charles Manson, RoboCop 2's murderous, messianic Cain believes that his designer drug Nuke is the way to paradise, thus his plans to distribute it to the entire city. While some might quibble with Cain's ethics, there's no denying his marketing finesse: Nuke is cheap, highly potent, long-lasting, and incredibly easy to use, consisting of a small needle-tipped tube injected directly into the jugular. It also comes in several fun and colorful flavors, in names that resemble narcotic Otter Pops—Red Ramrod, Black Thunder, White Noise, Blue Velvet—each with their own distinctive highs, and all conveniently transported in a cassette-tape case. It's no wonder half of Old Detroit, even RoboCop's fellow officers, are hooked on the stuff. And considering OCP's plans to turn the city into a bland, corporate-controlled community, is Cain's vision really any more despicable?
15. Gleemonex, Kids In The Hall: Brain Candy
Billed as making you "feel like it's 72 degrees in your head all the time," Gleemonex is the controversial creation of Dr. Chris Cooper (Kevin McDonald), who has made it his lifelong mission to find a one-stop cure for depression. On the surface, it sounds like a dream: In Cooper's words, his pill "reaches into your brain 'chemically,' then it locates your happiest memory 'chemically,' then it locks onto that emotion and freezes it 'chemically,' and then it keeps your happy happy." But in spite of its initial (albeit enduring) euphoria and the way it seemingly changes lives for the better—Bruce McCullouch's "Grivo" ditches his dour grunge music for award-winning songs about pie; Scott Thompson's "Wally" finally comes out to his family—eventually Gleemonex users become little more than smiling shells, endlessly replaying their happiest memories while trapped in permanent comas. But no one ever said happiness came without a price.
16. Snow crash, Snow Crash
In Neal Stephenson's breakthrough novel Snow Crash, the titular substance is both a drug and a computer virus, as well as an ancient Sumerian curse of sorts—in fact, it's practically a floor wax and a candy mint too. The hero/protagonist Hiro Protagonist encounters snow crash early on in the book, as the hot new designer drug all his friends and associates are doing, in part because it has a unique ability to affect them both in meatspace and in the virtual world where most of them hang out. Then, as the computer-virus side kicks in, it starts destroying that virtual world. Don't do the Sumerian meta-acid, kids. It's a real bummer.
17. Mimezine, Wild Palms
Much like snow crash, mimezine is part drug, part trippy virtual-reality experience, and all evil plot by an ambitious church leader trying to take over people's minds. One might almost expect that the miniseries' creators had, um, read Stephenson's 1992 book before making their 1993 series. In Wild Palms' world (which also bears a dreamy similarity to that of David Lynch's Twin Peaks, which had just ended) the launch of a new holographic TV network coincides with the launch of a new designer drug, mimezine; users experience the TV holograms as solid and real, and can interact with them. Problem is, mimezine is addictive, and overuse causes users to hallucinate a giant cathedral, where they start to congregate. This all takes place in the wildly high-tech far-flung future of 2007. Now, in addition to flying cars, we can all bitch about being denied solid holograms and drugs that promote church-going.
18. Various disgusting substances, Naked Lunch
Vegetarians often point out that if the average human carnivore could see where their meats come from, they'd swear off. In theory, the same should go for the various drugs people use to deal with the grimness and griminess of life in the David Cronenberg adaptation of William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch. It's bad enough when an writer-exterminator played by Peter Weller starts ingesting his own "bug powder dust" and hallucinating that his typewriter is also a giant talking bug/anus. But then he moves on to "black meat," a narcotic made out of giant centipedes, and then to "mugwump jism," acquired by, well, sucking on mugwumps. Which do not look like something anyone should want to suck, no matter how profound the high. Supposedly, all this is how the Weller in the film, a Burroughs stand-in in several ways, came to write the book Naked Lunch. Given what a choppy, psychedelic mess the book is, that isn't too hard to believe.
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